Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

How shall I begin? I must tell the whole truth. Mother, mother, I have made a great mistake, the one great mistake of life. I have mistaken the man with whom I am to live. Charles and I were engaged for two years. I have discovered nothing new in him. I was familiar with all his ways and thought them all good. I compared him with other men who were extravagant and who had vices, and I considered myself fortunate. He was cool, but how much better it was to be so than to have a temper, for I should never hear angry words from him which cannot be forgotten? I remembered how measured my uncle Robert’s speech was, how quiet he was, and yet no two human beings could have been more devoted to one another than uncle and aunt. Charles’s quietude seemed so like uncle’s. Charles was very methodical. He always came to see me on the same days, at the same hours, and stayed the same time. It provoked me at first, but I said to myself that he was not a creature of fits and starts and that I could always depend on him.

He always kissed me when we met and when we parted. I do not remember that he ever had me in his arms, and I never felt he was warm and eager when we were alone together; but I had heard of men and women who married for what they called love, and in a twelvemonth it had vanished and there was nothing left. Of many small particulars I took but little notice. When we chose the furniture I wanted bright-coloured curtains, but he did not like them and bought dark red, gloomy stuff. I tried to think they were the best because they would not show the London dirt. I had a bonnet with scarlet trimmings which suited my black hair, but he asked me to change them for something more sober, because they made me conspicuous. Again I thought he was right, and that what might do for the country might not be proper in town. Trifles! and yet to me now what a meaning they have! Two years—and everything is changed, although, as I have just said, I have found out nothing new! The quietude is absence of emotion, different in its root from uncle Robert’s serenity. It is the deadly sameness of a soul to which nothing is strange and wonderful and a woman’s heart is not so interesting as an advertisement column in the newspaper. He never cares to look into mine. I do not pretend that there is anything remarkable in it, but if he were to open it he would find something worth having. This absence of curiosity to explore what is in me kills me. What must the bliss of a wife be when her husband searches her to her inmost depths, when she sees tender questions in his eyes, when he asks her _do you really feel so_? and she looks at him and replies _and you_? I could endure the uneventfulness of outward life if anything not unpleasant _happened_ between me and Charles. Nothing happens. Something happens in my relationship to my dog. I pat him and he is pleased; he barks for joy when I go out. I cannot live with anybody with whom I am always on exactly the same even terms—no rising, no falling, mere stagnation. I am dead, but it is death without its sleep and peace. Fool, fool that I was! I cannot go on. What shall I do? If Charles drank I might cure or tolerate him; if he went after another woman I might win him back. I can lay hold of nothing.

A child? Ah no! I have longed unspeakably for a child sometimes, but not for one fathered by him.

* * * * *

BLACKDEEP, 24_th_ _January_ 1839.

I knew it all, but I dared not speak till you had spoken. Your letter came when we were at breakfast. I could not open it, for my heart told me what was in it. Jim wondered why I let it lie on the table, and I made some excuse. After breakfast I took it upstairs into my own room and sat down by the bed, your father’s bed, and cried and prayed. If he were alive he would have helped me, or if no help could have been found he would have shared my sorrow. It is dreadful that, no matter what my distress may be, he cannot speak. What counsel can I send you? I have had much to do with affliction, but not such as yours. My love for you is of no use. I will be still. I have always found, when I am in great straits and my head is confused, I must hold my tongue and do nothing. If I do not move, a way may open out to me. Meantime, live in the thought of Blackdeep and of me. It will do you no harm and may keep you from sinking.

* * * * *

HOMERTON, 30_th_ _January_ 1839.

No complaint, no reproof. You might have told me it was perhaps my fault.

I always have to reflect on what I am about to say to him. I go through my sentences to the end before I open my lips. He dislikes exaggeration, and checks me if I use a strong word; but surely life sometimes needs strong words, and those which are tame may be further from the truth than those which burn. When he first began to think about buying the house, I was surprised and talked with less restraint than is usual with me. After a little while he said that I had not contributed anything definite to a settlement of the question. I dare say I had not, but it is natural to me to speak even when I do not pretend to settle questions. He seems to think that speech is useless unless for a distinct, practical purpose. At Blackdeep almost everything that comes into my head finds its way to my tongue. The repression here is unbearable.

Last night it rained, and Charles’s overcoat was a little wet at the bottom. He asked that it might be put to the fire. Directly he came down in the morning he felt his coat and at breakfast said in his slow way, ‘My coat has not been dried.’ I replied that I was very sorry, that I had quite forgotten it, and that it should be dried before he was ready to start. I jumped up, brought it into the room and hung it on a chair on the hearth-rug. He did not thank me and appeared to take no notice. ‘I am indeed very sorry,’ I repeated. He then spoke. ‘I do not care about the damp: it is the principle involved. I have observed that you do not endeavour systematically to impress my requests on your mind. If you were to take due note of them at the time they are made, and say them aloud two or three times to yourself, they would not escape your memory. Forgetfulness is never an excuse in business, and I do not see why it should be at home.’ ‘O Charles!’ I cried, ‘do not talk about principles in such a trifle; I simply forgot. I should be more likely to forget my cloak than your coat.’ He did not answer me, but opened a couple of letters, finished his breakfast, and then began to write at the desk. I went upstairs, and when I returned to the breakfast room he had gone. In the evening he behaved as if nothing had passed between us. He would have thought it ridiculous if such a reproof had unsettled a clerk at the bank, and why should it unsettle me? The clerk expects to be taught his lesson daily. So does every rational being.

Nothing! nothing! I can imagine Mrs. Perkins’ contempt if I were to confide in her. ‘As good a husband as ever lived. What do you want, you silly creature? I suppose it’s what they call passion. You should have married a poet. You have made an uncommonly good match and ought to be thankful.’ A poet! I know nothing of poets, but I do know that if marriage for passion be folly, there is no true marriage without it.

* * * * *

BLACKDEEP, 7_th_ _February_ 1839.

I am no clearer now than I was a fortnight ago. I wish I could talk to somebody, and then perhaps my thoughts would settle themselves. Last Sunday I made up my mind I would come to you at all costs; then I doubted, and this morning again I was going to start at once. Now my doubts have returned. Jim notices how worried I am, and I make excuses.

I cannot rest while I am not able to do more than put you off by praying you to bear your lot patiently. It is so hard to stand helpless and counsel patience. Could you give him up and live here? I am held back, though, from this at present. I am not sure what might happen if you were to leave him. Perhaps he would be able to force you to return. You have no charge to make against him which anybody but myself would understand.

I must still wait for the light which I trust will be given me. It is wonderful how sometimes it strikes down on me suddenly and sometimes grows by degrees like the day over Ingleby Fen. I lay in bed late this morning, for I hadn’t slept much, and watched it as it spread, and I thought of my Esther in London who never sees the sunrise.

* * * * *

HOMERTON, 14_th_ _February_ 1839.

There is hardly anything to record—no event, that is to say—and yet I have been swept on at a pace which frightens me. The least word or act urges me more than a blow. Yesterday I made up my accounts and was ten shillings short. I went over them again and again and could not get them right. I was going to put into the cash-box ten shillings of my own money, but I thought there might be some mistake and that Charles, who always examines my books, would find it out, and that it would be worse for me if he had discovered what I had done than if I had let them tell their own tale. After dinner he asked for them, counted my balance, and at once found out there was ten shillings too little. I said I knew it and supposed I had forgotten to put down something I had spent. ‘Forgotten again?’ he replied; ‘it is unsatisfactory: there is evident want of method.’ He locked the box and book in the desk and read the newspaper while I sat and worked. Next day I remembered the servant had half-a-sovereign to pay the greengrocer, and I had not seen her since I gave it to her. When Charles returned from the bank my first words were, ‘O Charles, I know all about the half-sovereign: I am so glad.’ Would not you have acknowledged you were glad too? He looked at me just as he did the night before. I believe he would rather I had lost the money. ‘Your explanation,’ was his response, ‘makes no difference: in fact it confirms my charge of lack of system. I have brought you some tablets which I wish you to keep in your pocket, and you must note in them every outgoing at the time it is made. These items are then to be regularly adjusted, and transferred afterwards.’ I could not restrain myself.

‘Charles, Charles,’ I cried, ‘do not _charge_ me, as if I had committed a crime. For mercy’s sake, soften! I have confessed I was careless; can you not forgive?’ ‘It is much easier,’ was the answer, ‘to confess and regret than to amend. I am not offended, and as to forgiveness I do not quite comprehend the term. It is one I do not often use. What is done cannot be undone. If you will alter your present habit, forgiveness, whatever you may mean by it, becomes superfluous.’ His lips shut into their usual rigidity. Not a muscle in them would have stirred if I had kissed them with tears. No tears rose; I was struck into hardness equal to his own, and with something added. I _hated_ him. ‘Henceforward,’ I said to myself, ‘I will not submit or apologise; there shall be war.’

16_th_ _February_ 1839.

I left my letter unfinished. War? How can I make war or continue at war? I could not keep up the struggle for a week. I am so framed that I must make peace with those with whom I have disagreed or I must fly. I would take nine steps out of the ten—nay, the whole ten which divide me from dear friends; I would say that this or that was not my meaning. I would abandon all arguing and wash away differences with sheer affection. Toward Charles I cannot stir. Sometimes, although but seldom, my brother Jim and I have quarrelled. Five minutes afterwards we have been in one another’s arms and the angry words were as though they had never been spoken. Forgiveness is not a remission of consequences on repentance. It is simply love, a love so strong that in its heat the offence vanishes. Without love—and so far Charles is right—forgiveness even of the smallest mistake is impossible.

It is a thick, dark fog again this morning. At Blackdeep most likely it is bright sunlight.

Charles does not seem to suspect that his indifference has any effect on me. I suppose he is unable to conceive my world or any world but his own. If he were at Blackdeep now and the sun were shining, would it be to him a glowing, blessed ball of fire?

He may have just as much right to complain of me as I have to complain of him. He sets store on the qualities necessary for his business, and he knows what store the partners set on those qualities in him. No doubt they are of great importance to everybody. It must be hard for him to live with a woman who takes so little interest in city affairs and makes so much of what to him is of no importance. He looks down upon me as though I were not able to talk on any subject which, for its comprehension, requires intelligence. If he had married Miss Stagg, who has doubled the drapery business at Ely, they might have agreed together very well.

This is true, but I come back to myself. The virtues are not enough for me. Life with them alone is not worth the trouble of getting up in the morning. I thirst for you: I shall come, whatever may happen.

* * * * *

BLACKDEEP, 20_th_ _February_ 1839.

I cannot write an answer to your letter. You must come. I could not make up my mind last night, but this morning the light, the direction, as my mother used to say, was like a star. How you remind me of her! not in your lot but in your ways, and she had your black hair. She was a stranger to these parts. Where your grandfather first saw her I do not know, but she was from the hill country in the far south-west. She never would hear anything against our flats. When folk asked her if she did not miss the hills, she turned on them as if she had been born in the Fens and said she had found something in them better than hills. But how I do wander on! That has nothing to do with you now, although I could tell you, if it were worth while, how it came into my head. I shall look out for you this week.

* * * * *

LOMBARD STREET, 14_th_ _March_ 1839.

DEAR ESTHER,—You have now been away three weeks and I shall be glad to hear when you intend to return. Your mother I hope is better, and if she is not, I trust you will see that your absence cannot be indefinitely prolonged. I am writing at the Bank, and your reply marked ‘Private’ should be addressed here. Some changes, now almost completed, are being made in the lower rooms at Homerton which will give me one for any business of my own.—Your affectionate husband,

CHARLES CRAGGS.

* * * * *

BLACKDEEP, 17_th_ _March_ 1839.

DEAR CHARLES,—My mother is not well, and I shall be grateful to you if you will give me another week. I am sorry you have made alterations in the house without saying anything to me. It will be better now that I should not come back till they are finished.—Your affectionate wife,

ESTHER CRAGGS.

* * * * *

HOMERTON, 19_th_ _March_ 1839.

The paperhangers and painters have left; the carpets will be laid and the furniture arranged to-day. I trust to see you when I come home on the 22nd instant. This will nearly give you the week you desired. I shall be late at the Bank on the 22nd, but if you are fatigued with your journey there is no reason why you should not retire to rest, and we will meet in the morning.

* * * * *

BLACKDEEP, 21_st_ _March_ 1839.

I had hoped for a little delay, for I shrank from the necessity of announcing my resolve, although it has for some time been fixed. I shall not return. The reason for my refusal shall be given with perfect sincerity. I do not love you, and you do not love me. I ought not to have married you, and I can but plead the blindness of youth, which for you is a poor excuse. I shall be punished for the remainder of my days, and not the least part of the punishment will be that I have done you a grievous injury. Worse, however—ten thousand times worse—would it be for both of us if we were to continue chained together in apathy or hatred. I would die for you this moment to make good what you have lost through me, but to live with you as your wife would be a crime of which I dare not be guilty. This is all, and this is enough.

* * * * *

HOMERTON, 24_th_ _March_ 1839.

Madam,—I am not surprised at the contents of your letter of the 21st instant, nor am I surprised that your determination should have been made known to me from your mother’s house. I have no doubt that she has done her best to inflame you against me. How she contrives to reconcile with her religion her advice to her daughter to break a divine law, I will not inquire. I am not going to remonstrate with you; I will not humiliate myself by asking you to reconsider your resolution. I will, however, remind you of one or two facts, and point out to you the consequences of your action, so that hereafter you may be unable to plead you were not forewarned.

You will please bear in mind that _you_ have abandoned _me_; I have not abandoned you. You disappointed me: my house was not managed in accordance with my wishes, but I was prepared to accept the consequences of what I did deliberately and I desired to avoid open rupture. I hoped that in time you would learn by experience that the maxims which control my conduct rest on a solid basis; that I was at least to be esteemed, and that we might live together in harmony. I repeat, you have cast me off, though I was willing you should stay.

You confess you have done me a wrong, but have you reflected how great that wrong is? I have no legal grounds for divorce, and you therefore prevent me from marrying again. You have damaged my position in the Bank. Many of my colleagues, envious of my success, will naturally seize their opportunity and propagate false reports, and I therefore inform you that I shall require of you a document which my solicitor will prepare, completely exonerating me. This will be necessary for my protection. A Bank manager’s reputation is extremely sensitive, and a notorious infringement of any article of the moral code would in many quarters cause his commercial honesty to be suspected.

You allege that you are sincere, but I can hardly acquit you of hypocrisy. Your sentimental excuse for deserting me is suspicious.

When the document just mentioned has been signed, I shall send a copy of it to the rector of your parish. Without it he will know nothing but what you and your mother tell him, and he will be in a false position.

I hereby caution you that I shall not lose sight of you, and if at any time proof of improper relationship should be obtained, I shall take advantage of it.

CHARLES CRAGGS.

* * * * *

BLACKDEEP, 26_th_ _March_ 1839.

DEAREST MOTHER,—This letter came this morning, and I send it at once to you at Ely. Am I to answer it? When I read some parts I wished he had been near me that I might have caught him by the throat. I should have exulted that for once I could move him, although it should be by terror. It is strange that not until now did I know he was so brutal. Notice that, according to him, if a wife leaves her husband it must be for a rival. He does not understand how much she can hate him, body and soul, and with no thought of a lover; that her loathing needs no other passion to inflame it, and that the touch of his clean finger may be worse to her than a leper’s embrace.

When I had written so far I was afraid. I knelt down and cried to our Father who is in Heaven.—Your loving daughter,

ESTHER.

* * * * *

ELY, 28_th_ _March_ 1839.

You must not reply. I have always tried not to answer back if it will do no good. In a way, I am not sorry he has written in this style to you. It proves that the leading I had was true. I feared cruel claws ever since I first set eyes on him notwithstanding he was so even-tempered, and I am glad he has not shown them till you are safe in Blackdeep. I know what you will have to go through in time to come, but for all that I am sure I am right and that you are right. I am more sure than ever. I am sorry for him, but he will soon settle down and rejoice that you have gone. That spiteful word about my religion does not disturb me. I have my own religion. I have brought up my children in it. I have taught them to fear God and to love the Lord Jesus Christ, who has stood by me in all my troubles and guided me in all my straits whenever I have been willing to wait His time. I bless God, my dear child, that you have not gone away from your mother’s faith—ay, and your father’s too—and that you can still pray to your Heavenly Father in your distress. Be thankful you have been spared the worst, that you have not grown hard.

I shall come back this week; your aunt wants you here, and a change will do you good.

* * * * *

BLACKDEEP, 10_th_ _April_ 1839.

I am glad you went to Ely, for yesterday the parson called to see you. He had received a letter from Mr. Craggs, and considered it his duty as a Christian minister to endeavour to bring about a reconciliation. I told him at once he might spare himself the pains, for they would be useless. He replied that I ought to think of the example. Well, at that I broke out. I asked him whether that slut of a Quimby girl wasn’t a worse example, who at five-and-twenty had married Horrocks, the hoary old wretch, for his money, and leads him a dog’s life? Had he ever warned either of them? They go to church regular. I was very free, and I said I thought it was a bright example that a woman should have given up a fine house and money in London because there was no love with them, and should have come back to her mother at Blackdeep. Besides, I added, why should my Esther suffer a living death for years for the sake of the folk hereabouts? They weren’t worth it. She was too precious for that. ‘Oh!’ but he went on again, ‘they have souls to be saved. Husbands and wives may be led to imagine there is no harm in separating, and may yield to the temptations of unlawful love.’ This made me very hot, and I gave it him back sharp that a sinner could find in the Bible itself an excuse for his sin.

He said no more except that it would be a nice scandal for the Dissenters, and that he trusted God would bring me into a better frame of mind. He then went away. His reasoning went in at one ear and out at the other. Parsons are bound to preach by rule. It is all general: it doesn’t fit the ins and outs.

* * * * *

BLACKDEEP, 1_st_ _May_ 1839.

You had better stop at Ely as long as you can. Everybody is gossiping, for parson has told the story as he heard it from your husband. It is worse for Jim than for me, as he goes about among people here, and although they daren’t say anything to him about you, there is no mistake as to what they think. Mrs. Horrocks inquired after me, and said she was sorry to hear of my trouble. Jim told her I was quite well, and that the two cows were now all right. He wouldn’t let her see he knew what she meant.

Last night, Jim, who has been talking for a twelvemonth past about going to his cousin in America, asked me whether I would not be willing to leave. I have always set my face against it. To turn my back on the old house and the Fen, to begin again at my time of life in a new strange world would be the death of me. More than ever now am I determined to end my days here. They’d say at once we had fled. No, here we’ll bide and face it out.

* * * * *

They did not fly. Years went on, and to the astonishment of their neighbours—perhaps they were a little sorry—there was no sign that Esther had a lover. Mrs. Horrocks’s eyes were feline, but she was obliged to admit she was at fault. Jim married, and an agreeable opportunity was presented for the expression of amazement that his wife’s father and mother felt safe in allowing their child to enter such a family—but then she came from Norwich. The majority of the poor in Blackdeep Fen sided with the Suttons, and here and there a pagan farmer boldly declared that old Mrs. Sutton and her daughter were of a right good sort, and that there was not a straightforrarder man than Jim in Ely market. But to respectable Blackdeep society the Suttons remained a vexatious knot which it could not unpick and lay straight. Nobody, as Mrs. Horrocks observed, knew how to take them. Mrs. Craggs wore her wedding-ring, and when she was in Mrs. Jarvis’s shop looked her straight in the face and asked for what she wanted as if she were the parson’s wife. But that, according to Mrs. Horrocks, just showed her impudence. ‘What a time that poor Craggs in London must have had of it:’ (Mr. Horrocks was not present). ‘Lord! how I do pity the man.’ ‘And yet,’ added Mrs. Jarvis, ‘and _yet_, you might eat your dinner off Mrs. Craggs’s floor. I call it hers, for she cleans it.’ Clearly the living-room ought to have been a pigsty. It was particularly annoying that, although Mrs. Sutton and her family by absence from church had become infidels, they did not go to the devil openly as they ought to do, and thereby relieve Blackdeep of that pain and even hatred which are begotten by an obstinate exception to what would otherwise be a general law. Parson often preached that everybody was either a sheep or a goat. The Suttons were not sheep—that was certain; and yet it was difficult to classify them as ordinary Blackdeep goats, creatures with horns. Mrs. Jarvis had heard that there was a peculiar breed of goats with sheep’s wool and without horns. ‘Esther Craggs,’ she maintained, ‘will one day show us what she’s after; mark my word, you’ll see. If that brazen face means nothing, then I’m stone-blind.’

After Jim’s marriage Esther continued to manage the house and the dairy, leaving the cooking to her sister-in-law and the needlework to her mother. Soon after five o’clock on a bright summer morning the labourer going to his work heard the unbarring of Mrs. Sutton’s shutters and the withdrawal of bolts. The casement windows and the door were then flung open, and Esther generally came into the doorway and for a few minutes faced the sun. She did not shut herself up. She walked the village like a queen, and no Fen farmer or squireling ventured to jest with her. Mrs. Jarvis could not be brought to admit her stone-blindness and clung to the theory of somebody in London; but as Esther never went to London, and nobody from London came to her, and the postmistress swore no letters passed between London and the Sutton family, Mrs. Jarvis became a little distrusted, although some of her acquaintances believed her predictions with greater firmness as they remained unfulfilled. ‘I don’t care what you may say; don’t tell me,’ was her reply to sceptical objections, and it carried great weight.

Esther died of the Blackdeep fever in the fifth year after she came home. As soon as he received the news of her death Mr. Craggs married Mrs. Perkins, who had been twelve months a widow, was admitted into partnership, and is now one of the most respected men in the City.

KATE RADCLIFFE

IN 1844 there were living between Carlisle and Keswick, Robert Radcliffe and his only child Kate. They belonged to an ancient Roman Catholic family, remotely connected with the Earl of Derwentwater who was executed in 1716; but Robert Radcliffe’s father had departed from the faith of his ancestors, and his descendants, excepting one, had remained Protestant. Robert had inherited a small estate and had not been brought up to any profession. He had been at Cambridge, and at one time it was thought he might become a clergyman, but he had no call that way, and returned to Cumberland after his father’s death to occupy himself with his garden and books. He was a good scholar and had a library of some three thousand volumes. He married when he was about eight-and-twenty, but his wife died two years after Kate was born, and he did not marry again. He took no particular pleasure in field sports except angling, nor in the gaieties of county society, although he was not a recluse and was on friendly terms with most of his neighbours. He was fond of wandering in his own country, and knew every mountain and every pass for twenty miles round him. His daughter was generally his companion, sometimes on her pony and sometimes on foot. Neither of them had been abroad, save once to France when she was about sixteen. They cared little for travelling in foreign parts, and he always said he got nothing out of a place in which he was a lodger. He went once a Sunday to the village church: he was patron of the living. The sermons were short and simple. Theological questions did not much concern him, and he found in Horace, Montaigne, Swift, and the County History whatever mental exercise he needed. So far he was the son of his father, but his mother had her share in him. She was a strange creature, often shaken by presentiments. Years after she was married her husband had to go to Penrith on some business which she knew would keep him there for a night. She got it into her head when she was alone in the evening that something had happened to him. She could not go to bed nor sit still, and at three o’clock in the morning she called up her servant and bade him saddle his horse and hers. Off they started for Penrith, and she appeared before her astonished husband just as he was leaving his room at the inn for an early breakfast. She rushed speechless into his arms and sobbed.

‘What is the matter?’ he cried.

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing wrong at home?’

‘Nothing.’

She passed her hands slowly over his face as if to reassure herself, pushed back his hair, looked in his eyes, took both his hands and said softly, ‘Not another word, please.’

He understood her, at least in part. She remained quietly at the inn till the afternoon and then went home with him. She was also peculiar in her continual reference to first principles. The meaningless traditions, which we mistake for things, to her were nothing. She constantly asked, ‘why not?’ and was therefore dangerous. ‘If you go on asking “why not?”’ said her aunt to her once, ‘mark me you’ll come to some harm.’ She saw realities, and yet—it was singular—she saw ghosts. Mr. Radcliffe did not obviously resemble his mother, nor did Kate, and yet across both of them there often shot clear, and at times even flashing gleams, indisputable evidence that in son and granddaughter she still lived. It was in his relationship to his daughter that Mr. Radcliffe betrayed his mother’s blood. His reading, as we have said, was in Horace, Montaigne, and Swift, but if Kate went away for no longer than a couple of days to her cousins at Penrith, he used to watch her departure till she was hidden at the first bend of the road about half a mile distant, and then when he went back to his room and looked at her empty chair, a half-mad, unconquerable melancholy overcame him. It was not to be explained by anxiety. It was inexplicable, a revelation of something in him dark and terrible. In 1844 Kate Radcliffe was twenty-four years old. She had never been handsome, and when she was sixteen her pony had missed its footing on a treacherous mountain track and she narrowly escaped with her life. She was thrown on a rock, and her forehead was crossed henceforth beyond remedy with a long broad mark. She had never cared much for company, and her disfigurement made her care for it less. She could not help feeling that everybody noticed it, and most people in truth noticed nothing else. She was ‘the girl with a scar.’ As time went on, this self-consciousness, or rather consciousness of herself as the scar, diminished, but her indifference remained, other reasons for it being added. She never had a lover; and, indeed, what man could be expected to take to himself as wife even the wisest and most affectionate of women whose brow was indented? She was advised to wear some kind of head-gear which would hide her misfortune, but she refused. ‘Everybody,’ she said, ‘would know what was behind, and I will not be harassed by concealment.’ To her father her accident did but the more endear her. There is no love so wild, no, not even the love of a mistress, as that which is sometimes found in a father or mother for a child, and often for one who is physically or even mentally defective. It is not subject to satiety and lassitude, and grows with age. To Kate also her father was more than the whole world of men and women. The best of friends weary of one another and large spaces of separation are necessary, but these two were always happy together. Theirs was the blessed intimacy which is never unmeaning and yet can endure silence. They never felt that unpleasant stricture of the chest caused by a search for entertainment or for some subject of conversation.

Nevertheless, although Mr. Radcliffe was so much to Kate, she was herself, and consequently had wants which were not his. There had been born in her before 1844 a passion which could not be satisfied by any human being, a leaning forward and outward to something she knew not what. The sun rose over the fells; they were purple in sunset; the constellations slowly climbed the eastern sky on a clear night, and her heart lay bare: she wondered, she was bowed down with awe, and she also longed unspeakably. When she was about twenty-five years old she accepted an invitation to spend a few weeks with a friend in London. She was fond of music, and on her first Sunday she could not resist the temptation to hear a mass by Mozart in Saint Mary’s, Moorfields. She was overpowered, and something moved in her soul which she had never felt in the church at home. She worshipped at Saint Mary’s several times afterwards, and her friend rallied her on conversion to Roman Catholicism.

‘It is the music, Kate.’

‘Well, then, why not?’

‘The music is so tender, so overwhelming, that thinking is impossible.’

‘Is thinking the only way to the truth—putting two and two together? The noblest truth comes with music. More solid truth has been demonstrated by a song, a march, or a hymn, than by famous political and theological treatises. But I am not a Roman Catholic.’

‘Oh yes! I know what you mean: it is a poetical way of saying that music stimulates aspiration.’

‘No, that is not what I mean. If there be such a mental operation as passionless thinking it does not lead to much. Emotion makes intellectual discoveries.’

‘I do not understand you. Revealed religion rests on intelligent conviction. It is the doctrine of a Creator, of law, of sin, of redemption, of future happiness and misery.’

‘That is to say, your religion stands on authority or logic. But I cannot dispute with you. The beliefs by which some of us live—“belief” is not the right word—are not begotten or strengthened and cannot be overthrown by argument. We dare not expose them, but if they were to fail, we should welcome death and annihilation. I repeat, I am not a Roman Catholic.’

Kate went back to her father and her native hills. The drama of Saint Mary Moorfields was continually before her eyes, and Mozart’s music was continually in her ears. An ideal human being had been revealed to her who understood her, pitied her, and loved her. She was no longer a mere atom of dust, unnoticed amongst millions of millions. But the intensity of her faith gave birth to fear and doubt. Her own words recurred to her, but she was forced to admit that she must depend upon evidence. If Christ were nothing but a legend, she might as well kneel to a mist.

In those days, within five miles of her father’s house was a small Roman Catholic chapel. The priest had been well educated, but he had never questioned any of the dogmas imposed on him as a child. One Sunday morning, when her father did not go to church, Kate walked over to the chapel and heard mass. The contrast with Saint Mary Moorfields was great. The sermon disappointed her. It was little more than simple insistence on ritual duty. She reflected, however, that it was not addressed to her, but to those who had been brought up to believe. As she walked home a strange conflict arose in her. On the one hand were her imperious needs, which almost compelled assumption of fact; but the wind blew, and when she looked up the clouds sailed over the mountains. She sat on a grey rock to rest. It had lain there for thousands of years, and she was reminded of the Druid circle above the Greta. She could get no further with her thinking, and knelt down and prayed for light. It is of all prayers the most sincere, but she was not answered—at least not then. The next Sunday she went again to mass, and she had half a mind to signify her wish to confess, but what could she confess? She was burdened with no sins, and in confession she could not fully explain her case. She determined she would write to the priest and ask him to grant her an interview.

Her desertion of the parish church was observed, and of course nobody was surprised that Miss Radcliffe had turned Papist. The old Radcliffes were all Papists; there was Popery in the blood, and it came out like the gout, missing a couple of generations. Then again there was the scar, and Miss Radcliffe would never be married. One of the neighbours who suggested the scar and maidenhood as a sufficient reason for apostasy was a retired mill-owner, who was a Wesleyan Methodist when he was in business in Manchester, but had become ostentatiously Anglican when he retired into the country. The village blacksmith, whose ancestors had worked at the same forge since the days of Queen Elizabeth, was a fearless gentleman, and hated the mill-owner as an upstart. He therefore made reply that ‘other people changed their religion because they wanted to be respectable and get folk like the Radcliffes to visit them—which they won’t,’ the last words being spoken with emphasis and scorn.

Mr. Radcliffe was much disturbed. To him Roman Catholicism was superstition, and he wondered how any rational person could submit to it. To be sure he assented every week to supernatural history and doctrines presented to him in his own parish church, but to these he was accustomed, and his reason, acute as it was, made no objection. There was another cause for his distress. His only sister, whom he tenderly loved, had become a foreign nun and was lost to him for ever. His life was bound up with his child, and he dreaded intervention. It is all very well to say that religious differences need not be a bar to friendship. This is one of the commonplaces of people who understand neither friendship nor religion. When Kate and he went for their long walks together, they would no longer see the same hills; and there would always be something behind her affection for him and above it. He was moodily jealous, and it was unendurable that he should be supplanted by an intruder who would hear secrets which were not entrusted to a parent. There was still some hope. He did not know how far she had gone; and he resolved to speak to her. One morning, as soon as breakfast was over, he proposed an excursion; he could talk more freely in the open air. After a few minutes’ indifferent conversation he asked her abruptly if she was a Roman Catholic.

‘I cannot say.’

‘Cannot say! Do you still belong to our church?’

‘Father, do not question me.’

‘Ah! I see what has happened; it is lawful to hide from me, to prevaricate and perhaps’—he checked himself. ‘You know that ever since you have grown up I have hidden nothing from you. I have told you everything about my own affairs: I have asked your counsel, for I am old, and the wisdom of an old man is often folly. You have also told me everything: you have opened your heart to me. Think of what you have said to me: I have been mother and father to you. The trouble to me is not merely that you believe in transubstantiation and I do not, but that there is something in you which you reserve for a stranger. What has come to you?—for God’s sake keep close to me for the few remaining years or months of my life. Have you reflected on the absurdities of Romanism? Is it possible that my Kate should kneel at the feet of an ignorant priest!’

She was silent. She knew as little as her father of Roman Catholic history and creeds.

He went on:

‘Your aunt, my dear sister—a more beautiful creature never walked this earth—I do not know if she is alive or dead. Can that be true which kills love?’

‘Father, father,’ she cried, sobbing, ‘nothing can separate us!’

He said no more on that subject, and seemed to recover his peace of mind, although he was not really at rest. He was getting into years and he saw that words were useless and that he must wait the issue of forces which were beyond his control. ‘If she is to go, she must go: resistance will make it worse for me: I must thank God if anything of her is left for me. Thus spoke the weary submission of age, but it was not final, and the half-savage desire for his child’s undivided love awoke in him again, and he prayed that if he could not have it his end might soon come.

Kate’s love for her father was deep, but she could not move a single step merely to pacify him. She could have yielded herself entirely to him in worldly matters; she would have doubted many of her strongest beliefs if he had contested them; she would have given up all her happiness for him; she would have died for him; but she could not let go the faintest of her religious dreams, although it was impossible to put them into words.

She wrote her letter to the priest. She found him living in a cottage and was somewhat taken aback when she entered.

There were hardly any books to be seen, but a crucifix hung on the wall.

‘Miss Radcliffe—an old and honoured name! What can be the object of your visit?’

‘Father, I am in distress. I want something which perhaps you can give.’

‘Ah, my child, I understand. You would like to confess, but you are Protestant; I cannot absolve you. Return to the true fold and you can be released.’

‘O Father, I have committed no crime; I come to you because I doubt and I _must_ believe.’

The holy father was unused to such a penitent, and was perplexed and agitated.

‘Doubt, my child—yes, even the faithful are sometimes troubled with doubt, a temptation from the Enemy of souls. Were you one of the flock I could prescribe for you. But perhaps you mean doubt of the heresies of your communion. In that case I can recommend a little manual. Take it away with you, study it, and see me again.’

‘Father,’ said Kate, pointing to the crucifix, ‘did He, the Son of God, Son of the Virgin, really live on this earth? did He break His heart for me? If He did, I am saved.’

‘Surely your own minister has instructed you on this point; it is the foundation even of Protestantism.’

‘I prefer to seek instruction and guidance from you; answer me this one question.’

‘Satan has never thus assaulted me, and I have never heard of any such suggestion to one of my people. I am a poor parish priest. Take the manual. It has been compiled by learned men: read it carefully with prayer: I also will pray for you that you may be gathered into the eternal Church.’

Kate took the manual and went home. There was but little history in it, but there was much about the person of Christ. He was man and God ‘without confusion and without change.’ As man he had to learn as other men learn, and, as God, he knew everything. He was sinless, and the lusts of the flesh had no power over him, but he had a human body, and was necessarily subject to its infirmities. His human nature was derived from his mother. God was not born from her, and yet she was the mother of God. Kate was able to see that some part of what looked like sheer contradiction was the conjunction of opposites from which it is impossible to escape in the attempt to express the Infinite, but in the manual this contradiction was presented with repulsive hardness. The compiler desired to subjugate and depose the reason. This was not the Christ she wanted. She hungered for the God, the Man, at whose feet she could have fallen: she would have washed them with tears, she would have wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed them and anointed them with ointment. She could have followed Him to the court of the High Priest and have gloried in discipleship: she could have taken the thief’s place beside Him on the cross, and she would not have exchanged those moments of torture in companionship with Him for a life of earthly bliss. But—that fatal _but_—did He ever live, did He still live, did He love her, did He know how much she loved Him? Thus it has always been. There is an impulse in man which drives him to faith; the commonplace world does not satisfy him; he is forced to assume a divine object for his homage and love, and when he goes out into the fields it has vanished.

Kate did not call again upon the priest. Her father came to the conclusion that there was nothing in his suspicions, and that she had been suffering from one of her not uncommon fits of nervous restlessness and depression. This was a mercy, for his bodily health had begun to fail. The winter was very severe, and in the dark days just before Christmas he took to his bed and presently died, having suffered no pain and with no obscuration of his mind until the last ten minutes. Kate had nursed him with pious care: she was alone with him and closed his eyes about four o’clock in the morning. At first she was overcome with hysterical passion, and this was succeeded by shapeless thoughts which streamed up in her incessantly as the mists stream up from a valley at sunrise. Not until day broke did she leave the room and waken the household.

An epoch is created rather by the person than by the event. The experience which changes one man is nothing to another. Some will pass through life without a mark from anything that happens to them; others are transformed by a smile or a cloud. So also the same experience will turn different men into totally different paths. Kate had never seen death before. It smote her with such force that for months and months her father was before her eyes and she could not convince herself that he was not with her. But she went no further towards Roman Catholicism. She let the facts stand. Once when she was walking on the moors she stretched out her arms again and was urged to pray, but she felt that her prayer would be loss of strength and she stood erect. For nearly a twelvemonth she simply endured. She remembered a story in an old _Amulet_, one of a series of annuals, bound in crimson cloth and fashionable at that time, of a sailor stranded on a rock in the sea. The waves rose to his lips, but he threw back his head, and at that moment there was a pause and the tide turned. It might turn for her or it might not; she must not move. She read scarcely any books and lived much in the open air. The autumn was one of extraordinary splendour. September rains after a dry summer washed the air and filled the tarns and becks. Wherever she went she was accompanied by that most delicious sound of falling waters. The clouds, which through July and August had been nothing but undefined, barren vapour, gathered themselves together and the interspaces of sky were once more brilliantly blue. Day after day earth and heaven were almost too beautiful, for it was painful that her finite apprehension should be unequal to such infinite loveliness. She received no such answer as that for which she hoped when she knelt by the grey rock, but that is the way with the celestial powers; they reply to our passionate demands by putting them aside and giving us that for which we did not ask. _We know not how to pray as we ought_.

MR. WHITTAKER’S RETIREMENT